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Vallegrande, 1967 (2008)

Vallegrande, 1967 is one in a trilogy of videos based on events in Bolivian history and their effect on the country’s mytho-historic landscape.

Vallegrande, 1967 reenacts the display of guerrilla combatant Che Guevara’s corpse for the media after his assassination by the Bolivian army in La Higuera in 1967. The display of his mutilated corpse for journalists and selected spectators by the Bolivian military was meant to serve as proof of the guerrilla’s demise before his remains were buried in a secret, unmarked grave. The Christ-like figure of the posthumous Che lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestra Señora de Malta hospital in Vallegrande was filmed as a slow moving tracking-in shot in the same laundry room where Guevara’s body was laid. The small building, now covered in memorial graffiti written by Che admirers has become one of the most venerated stops on the “Che tourist path” and thus, part of the Che myth.